Title

Author

Keywords

Fishes -- Effect of water pollution on, Runoff, Western mosquitofish

Abstract

A research study was conducted to examine the relationship between speciation of heavy metals (Zn, Cd, Pb, Cu) and their biotoxicity. Therefore, static bioassay experiments were designed to determine LC-50 values for those metals on mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis. The standard bioassay scheme consisted of twelve 16-liter all-glass aquaria that provided duplicates of five different metal concentrations and a control for each run. Deionized tap water and filtered retention/detention water from Maitland Pond were used for bioassays. The effects of various physiochemical parameters such as pH, alkalinity, hardness and organic complexation on metal toxicity were determined. Also, synergistic and antagonistic effects resulting from metal mixtures were examined. It was concluded that metals in pond water were considerably less toxic than in deionized water for mosquitofish. Also, copper was consistently the most toxic metal tested for both deionized water and pond water.

Notes

If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu